Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2002-34187 (Patent Document 1) discloses a rotor in which a resin material fills a space between a hole provided in a rotor core and a permanent magnet embedded in the hole so as to secure the permanent magnet to the rotor core.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-51826 (Patent Document 2) discloses a rotor of an electric rotating machine in which a plurality of permanent magnets are arranged in an outer peripheral portion of a rotor core and a pair of end plates are secured to the two axial ends of the rotor core.
It is desired to improve the drive efficiency of the rotating electric machine. Therefore, regarding the rotor as well, it is desired to reduce the weight to a maximum extent allowable in terms of strength, magnetic characteristic and the like.
In the case, however, where a hole intended to reduce the weight of the rotor core is provided in addition to magnet-inserted holes, the area of the axial end surface of the rotor core is reduced and thus a jig used for injecting a filler into the magnet-inserted holes may not be placed at an optimum position in some cases. As a result, the injection efficiency of the filler is deteriorated and accordingly the productivity of the rotor is deteriorated.
In contrast, Patent Documents 1 and 2 do not disclose a hole which is provided for reducing the weight and into which a filer is not injected. Therefore, the documents do not disclose a structure for solving the problem of deterioration in productivity of the rotor in the case where a hole is provided for the purpose of reducing the weight.